


Running Up That Probability Curve

by Paratale



Series: All Those Times They Didn't Kiss [6]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Body Swap, M/M, Pre-Slash, Technobabble, Telepathic Shenanigans, Telepathy, aka REALLY BAD SCIENCE, alternative title: odo's terrible horrible no good very bad day, featuring puddle!quark, linking with solids, odo is a mile deep in denial, set mid-late season 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 04:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7345540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paratale/pseuds/Paratale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mishap with an alien quantum entanglement device causes Quark and Odo to swap bodies for two days. Odo is not thrilled about being solid again. Quark is in a bucket.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Up

**Author's Note:**

> First of all: big thank you to jazzypizzaz for beta-ing this fic!! It's been ages since I wrote anything longer than a couple thousand words and having a second pair of eyes was super super helpful <3  
> Second: as a student of physics I must apologize for butchering the concept of quantum entanglement. And probably a million other things. (It was for the greater gay.) Don't try this on your exam.
> 
> Finally, the title is joke on Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anticipated FAQ:
> 
> Q: Why do these chapters have such weird names?
> 
> A: Well, I just happened to know that are six "flavors" of the subatomic "quark", and I couldn't resist. One flavor, "top," is missing, because Quark has never in his life been on top.

“I wish you hadn’t arrested him,” Quark said wistfully as he watched two of Odo’s security team escort a tranquilized customer out of the bar. “Gumiro was _so_ bad at dabo.”

“He’s a mercenary and a thief,” Odo grunted, sliding into a seat at the bar. “And I doubt the only reason you’re sorry to see him go is because he was ‘bad at dabo.’”

Quark raised his hands and shrugged. “Did I interfere?”

“What is that?” Odo was immediately distracted by the object Quark had in one hand. No doubt he thought it was some sort of exotic contraband.

Quark held it up. “I have no idea. A merchant gave it to me after I paid her for a shipment. Of legal goods,” he added, flashing Odo a knowing look. “She said it was a gift, but it looks pretty worthless to me.” He turned back to the trinket. Or was it more accurately described as a sculpture? Maybe a paperweight? It was roughly the shape of two spinning tops connected at the stem, and a dark matte color all over, yet the surface seemed slightly luminous. The size was such that Quark could fit one end comfortably in each hand.

“I should inspect it,” muttered Odo. “It could be some sort of surveillance device.”

“Suit yourself. I can’t imagine who I’d sell it to anyway.” Odo squinted a little in surprise at Quark’s lack of resistance, and Quark smiled smugly at catching Odo off guard. Gripping one end of the trinket, Quark held out the other end for Odo to grasp.

Odo wrapped his fingers around the other end, and that’s when the trouble started. They both froze, and Quark felt an odd sensation, like he was being pulled inside of the object. For a millionth of a second, all sense of having a physical body seemed to vanish. Then his awareness faded entirely.

* * *

When Odo came to, he was slumped over the bar. He pushed himself up, and something immediately felt wrong. His vision had gone slightly fuzzy; meanwhile, all sound in the bar now seemed almost painfully loud. One of his boots was pinching in the front—

_His boots?_

“…Seems to have lost his shape,” Bashir was saying from somewhere on the floor. Odo squinted over the bar to see Kira and Bashir kneeling over what looked like…

_Oh, no._

Kira must have heard his movement, because she stood up and gave him a look that could sour milk. “Quark! What happened here?”

“I’m not Quark,” said Odo. Kira raised her eyebrows at him exasperatedly, but they slowly furrowed when Odo continued to stare at her.

“ _…Odo?_ ”

* * *

 

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Dax as she scanned the instrument of what Odo could only imagine must be some cruel joke played on him by the universe. “Where did Quark get it?”

“He said it was a gift from a merchant, but he didn’t mention a name, or even a species,” said Odo. He had made his way out from behind the bar, and was staring in dull shock at his body, as it were. He supposed he should be glad that Quark was apparently unable to shapeshift—Quark with access to shapeshifting abilities would certainly be trouble—but he still disliked allowing humanoids to get a good look at his natural form, and now it was spread out on the floor of Quark’s bar like so much spilled synthehol.

“Give me that device,” he said to Dax suddenly, who placed it pointedly on the bar before letting Odo touch it. Odo quickly picked it up and tried touching it the Quark puddle, hoping for a repeat of whatever had just occurred. Nothing happened.

“That’s one solution ruled out, anyway,” Kira noted. Odo set the device on the bar again in defeat. Dax went back to scanning it with interest.

“Well, we need to get Quark off the floor,” said Bashir. “I might be able to run some tests and figure out what exactly happened, but I’ve got to get you both to the infirmary.”

Odo sighed. “I’ll try to get him into a bucket,” he said, returning to the bar to replicate a clean container. “Alright, Quark,” he said with as much resigned irritation as he could muster, kneeling to address the puddle of Quark and placing the bucket in front of him. “Now you’ll get to see what it’s like to sleep in a bucket.” He was already starting to dislike the sound of Quark’s voice speaking his words.

Quark didn’t move. An awkward silence descended over the three remaining humanoid forms. “Come on,” Odo grunted. “I could manage simple locomotion very soon after I was discovered. The sooner you get in this bucket, the sooner we can put things right.” Quark probably wouldn’t be able to perceive anything he was saying, but he should be able to sense Odo’s presence, and the presence of the bucket.

“It would help if he could tell us who gave this to him,” said Dax, examining her tricorder readings. “Then maybe we could contact the merchant and ask how to reverse whatever happened.” Quark was still motionless. Odo let out a hiss of frustration, then practically recoiled from himself. Quark’s voice was bad enough; Odo didn’t know if he could stand making involuntary Ferengi vocalizations.

“Fine, Quark,” he muttered. “We can do this the hard way.” Odo’s natural form was not adhesive, and it would not stick to the floor of the bar—he would just have to sort of… scoop Quark into the bucket. Humiliating, but doable. He plunged Quark’s hands into the gel—

\--and was immediately overcome with waves of terror, confusion, and just a little bit of whining indignation. Odo gasped and felt Quark’s body convulse slightly.

Somehow, they had formed a rudimentary link through physical contact. He had sometimes been able to link with solids before, but this was stronger—maybe because Odo’s thought patterns were still changeling patterns, even if he was currently in a solid body. He couldn’t help whimpering a little, he was so relieved—wait, no, that was Quark who was relieved—

 _Odo Odo Odo Odo_ , Quark babbled, flooding the link with question marks.

Ignoring Bashir’s worried reach for his tricorder, Odo screwed Quark’s eyes shut and tried to return something through the link. It’s alright, he soothed. I’m here. Quark’s consciousness stopped vibrating in fear and slowed to an indignant jiggle.

 _Now would you_ please _get in that bucket?_ He tried to communicate the knowledge of how to do so as best he could. Slowly, Quark trickled into the bucket. Odo opened Quark’s eyes and pulled his hands out of the gel.

“What did you do?” asked Dax, fascinated.

“It appears we can form a basic empathic link,” Odo explained, getting to his feet and picking up the bucket. He suppressed a grunt of effort; the bucket was rather heavy with the Quark-Odo-goo inside of it, and Quark’s body wasn’t exactly athletic. “Not enough of a link for him to tell me who that merchant was, but enough for me to tell him how to get in the bucket.”

“Maybe if you teach him to shapeshift into humanoid form, we can get him to tell us the name of the merchant,” Kira suggested.

“In the meantime, I’m taking you both to the infirmary,” Bashir said firmly.

* * *

“I’m reading unusual fluctuations on the quantum level, and of course the brain scans I did on—“ Bashir coughed—“um, Odo, are a little different from my records of Quark’s baseline. But otherwise, everything’s showing up normal.”

“You’re saying you don’t know how to change us back?” Odo clarified, resenting the way Quark’s feet failed to reach the floor from the bed. Quark was in the bucket a few feet away, oozing silently beneath an array of scanning equipment.

“We just need time, that’s all,” said Dax, smiling serenely. She looked to be enjoying herself far too much, in Odo’s opinion. “Quantum fluctuations are always promising,” she quipped.

“This is completely unacceptable,” Odo complained. “I have duties to perform--”

“I’d strongly advise you to reduce your duties as Chief of Security to paperwork for the time being,” said Bashir, already looking at something on his monitor with interest. “It’s not really fair to put Quark’s physical health at risk.”

Odo reluctantly agreed. It was doubtful he could use Quark’s form for combat purposes at all, even taking into account the techniques he had learned the last time he was solid. Quark’s body was small and slightly pudgy, with no muscle tone speak of. And he was not at all intimidating, which Odo had found was a rather important quality to have in law enforcement.

He nearly groaned aloud when he realized he would have to take a detour to Quark’s quarters to pick up Ferengi-sized clothing. And that he was already experiencing the unpleasantly familiar sensation of hunger. “Doctor, is there some sort of nutritional supplement I could take as long as I’m in this form? I have no desire to try eating insects.”

“Sure, I can get you something for that.” Bashir turned and gave him an amused look. “But you shouldn’t discount the insects so quickly. I’ve tried Terran grubs, and they aren’t so bad.”

Kira wrinkled her nose at Bashir, then turned to Odo. “I’ll make sure to get the message out that Quark isn’t quite who he appears to be,” Kira offered, “minimize the awkward conversations.”

“Thank you, Nerys,” said Odo gratefully. Kira smiled at him, though it became slightly strained when they made eye contact. She patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. Quark’s shoulder, Odo thought uncomfortably.

“I’d better get Sisko up to speed,” she said, and took her leave. Odo made a calculated hop off the cot and clasped Quark’s hands behind his back.

“If it makes no difference to either of you,” he said, “I’d better start… making arrangements.”

“Go on,” said Dax cheerfully, “I’ll keep working on a way to turn you both back, don’t worry.” She bounced off in the direction of the lab, the clasped hands behind her back barely concealing her glee.

“Come back tomorrow morning when you can, alright?” said Bashir. “We’ll run a few more tests and see if you can’t get Quark to shapeshift.”

Trying not to think too hard about the idea of Quark with access to shapeshifting abilities, Odo exited the infirmary.


	2. Down

Odo went to bed believing his time as a solid had prepared him for the task of sleeping, though he hadn’t used the bed in his quarters in months, and the sheets had gotten a bit dusty in the meantime. He even remembered to take off his shoes and change into Quark's onesie pajamas before getting into bed (which were, he had to admit, quite comfortable and very soft on the inside).

Seven hours later, however, Odo was certain he could not have slept for more than three. Every time he finally dropped off, he was woken by footsteps, the distant whirr of a replicator, or, worse, the distinctive sounds of a couple _coupling_. Almost as disruptive as the noise was a persistent ache in Quark’s left shoulder. Finally, he was woken yet again by the need to relieve himself. He decided to take it as a sign to just give up on sleeping for now.

Like the bed, his closet hadn’t been used in quite some time. He had recycled all of the uniforms Garak had made for him some time ago, so its sole occupant was the plainest outfit he had been able to find in Quark’s quarters the previous evening. Odo didn't feel any particular embarrassment or discomfort as he changed. Odo was always careful to observe humanoid ideals of modesty, both with regards to himself and to those around him, but he had none of the visceral discomforts associated with nudity that many humanoids had. The best he could do was try to understand that in terms of discomfort rendered, nudity was to humanoids as his natural gooey state was Odo. That thought provided him with just enough sympathy for Quark’s situation that he resolved to avoid careful of examination of his uncovered body unless absolutely necessary.

When he was fairly certain all those ridiculous buckles and buttons were in the right places, he attached his communicator to the fabric, got out his PADD and began drafting a note to his staff confirming that he would be confined to desk duty for a (hopefully) short time, and that he would be holding a meeting at 1300 hours to brief everyone on the situation.

The door chimed, and he answered it without thinking. Garak looked down at him with an expression that began with open-mouthed surprise and quickly progressed to an amused smirk.

"I see. Perhaps I should come back later."

"Wait, Garak, let me explain--"

"That won't be necessary, Quark. I admit, were you a Cardassian I would have long suspected—”

"I am _not_ Quark!” In Quark’s voice, Odo’s attempt at being emphatic came out as a squawk. Odo felt Quark’s face getting warm with frustration. Oh, he had not missed having a solid’s autonomic nervous system. “Quark is currently in a bucket in the infirmary!"

Garak peered at him, scaly brows lowered in confusion. "What are you saying?"

"Quark and I--Odo--have... Switched places," Odo grumbled, still thinking about Garak’s initial reaction. Why would Garak assume Quark had been sleeping over? That had to be the _least_ likely explanation for Quark being in Odo’s quarters in the early morning!

Odo turned progressively redder as his mind began tormenting him with an image of Quark asleep in Odo’s bed. Meanwhile, Garak's eyes widened in understanding and interest. " _Fascinating!_ ” He leaned into get a better look at Odo. Odo instinctively took a step back. “How did it happen?"

"Dax and Doctor Bashir are still trying to figure that out, but it all started with some infernal device Quark acquired from one of his business contacts.”

“The possibilities for such a device… I can scarcely begin to imagine all of them,” said Garak, his eyes taking on a sinister gleam.

“Don’t get ideas,” Odo grunted. If he was in his usual humanoid form, he would have sternly glared down his nose at Garak, but he was foiled again by Quark’s short legs. “I fully intend to outlaw that device on this station as soon as I figure out what it is. Now, is there a reason you’re here?”

“I was on my way to the replimat and wondered if you’d like to join me,” said Garak, looking very plain and simple again. “We haven’t had a chance to speak in some time. And now that you’re a solid again, you must require breakfast,” he added.

“Unfortunately,” Odo agreed.

They made their way to the replimat and found a quiet table. Odo was glad to have Garak with him as his presence seemed to deter the other patrons from asking awkward questions. He didn’t even want to think about whatever odd rumors must be flying around concerning Quark and Odo’s situation.

Odo ordered plain broth, which he remembered having preferred as a solid. Quark’s palate, however, didn’t seem to agree. Rather than tasting pleasantly salty, the broth seemed almost rank. Odo wrinkled his nose at the first spoonful. Garak chuckled.

“I heard Nog added a few Ferengi dishes to the replicators,” he suggested. Odo glowered and forced down another swallow of broth. “Really, Odo, I would understand a Cardassian’s trepidation about dining on insects, but why should it bother _you?_ ”

“I dislike all solid food. The texture is unsettling.” He grimaced at the memory of various foods he had tried as a solid. They had all felt so strange going down his throat; it made him want to gag. And as petty as it might have been, Odo wanted to maintain some semblance of control over the situation, even if that simply meant refusing to eat the food Quark liked.

“Suit yourself,” shrugged Garak, taking a dainty bite of his own meal. “And what does Quark make of all this?”

“He’s completely unable to shapeshift and therefore incapable of expressing an opinion at the moment.” Odo still remembered the fear he’d felt through the link. He tried to put it out of his mind. If he imagined Quark sitting in that bucket in the lab all night, unable to move or communicate, or even to sense the environment as he was used to, he might start feeling sympathetic—and that way lay madness.

“That may be for the best,” mused Garak. “No doubt if Quark could shapeshift, he would immediately set about creating trouble for himself.”

“Agreed, but unfortunately, he’s the only one who knows who gave him the device that did this, and right now he can’t tell us.”

“If it’s any consolation, Odo, I have every confidence in Doctor Bashir and Lieutenant Dax’s ability to reverse the process.”

Odo hoped Garak’s estimation was correct. Or at the very least sincere, which was never a guarantee with Garak (though if there was anyone Garak had confidence in, it would be Doctor Bashir). It was so infuriatingly easy to start _worrying_ about Quark when the little man wasn’t being comfortingly repulsive. Hopefully Dax was already well on her way to finding a solution, and the insidious feelings of sympathy he was experiencing would end.

* * *

“I’m still reading quantum fluctuations,” Bashir murmured as he scanned Odo for a second time. “It’s almost like you’re slightly distorting the subspace around you. Your condition is quite mysterious, Odo.”

“How encouraging.” Odo glanced in the direction of the lab. “What about Quark?”

“Well, he still hasn’t figured out how to shapeshift, but all his readings are normal, save for the same fluctuations. Whatever’s going on, it’s got something to do with those.” Bashir gave Odo a sidelong glance as he returned to his monitor to input the readings. “I think you should try linking with him again. Rom’s in there now to say hello, but I have no idea how well Quark can understand what’s going on around him.”

“I’ll do my best to get him to shapeshift,” Odo promised.

“Well, yes, but it’s not just that…” Bashir turned around and leaned back against the console, expression soft. Doctor Bashir was always gentler and quieter than Julian Bashir. “You’ve been a lot of things, but Quark has only ever been himself, and now he finds himself in a completely alien form. It would be a nice gesture if you reassured him that we’re all doing what we can to fix this, and it’s going to fine.”

“ _Is_ it going to be fine?” Odo asked dryly. Bashir smiled.

“If you and Quark can swap bodies once, you can do it again. We just have to figure out how that device did in the first place.”

Odo moved to get off the bed, but winced when he put weight on Quark’s bad shoulder. Bashir’s keen eye caught him, of course. “Is something wrong?”

“Only Quark’s shoulder. It’s been aching on and off all day and night.”

“Ah,” said Bashir delicately, hesitating before he continued. “Well, Odo, normally this would fall under doctor-patient confidentiality, but I suppose the circumstances are bit extenuating…”

Odo sighed for what must have been the millionth time that day. And that day wasn't even half over. “What’s wrong with him, Doctor?”

“It’s an injury from last year—torn rotator cuff. I recommended a stretching regimen that should have cleared up any residual pain by now, but I doubt he took my advice.”

“Injury from…? Brunt’s Nausicaans,” Odo hissed. A white hot rage shot through him, igniting the frustration he was already feeling about his situation. The intensity of it surprised him, and he quickly wrestled it back into the box with the rest of his emotions. A few more twinges of sympathy and the stupid thing was going to run out space. “I still can’t believe he never let me lock up that slimy troll for good.”

“Well, he was literally and figuratively twisting Quark’s arm,” Bashir said. “His other injuries were much more severe, but I’m afraid as a result I didn’t get to the torn rotator cuff until after treating everything else. By then, there was already a lot of inflammation—turns out Ferengi don’t have the same range of motion in the arms as Humans do, and the injury was much more severe than I expected.”

“You’d better show me that stretching regimen,” Odo grumbled.

* * *

Odo left the infirmary with a much looser and less painful shoulder. Trust Quark not to make time to take care of his own body. Now it was up to Odo to do damage control, as usual. He made his way to the lab to try to teach Quark how to shapeshift.

“I’ve been telling him about my engineering assignment,” Rom babbled happily. “The Chief and I are upgrading the transporters!”

 _If Quark can understand him, I bet he wishes he couldn’t,_ Odo thought.

“I’m going to ask the Chief if I can look at the device Quark had, though. Maybe I can help Dax figure out how it works.” Rom turned back to the dish in which Quark was puddled, face falling a little. “I’m not sure he knows I’m here… he doesn’t move at all.”

"I can perceive the presence of others in my natural state,” said Odo, “but it’s possible Quark has not figured out how to use my senses yet. They’re quite different from what he’s used to.”

“Doctor Bashir said you can link with him. Uh… will you tell him I said hello? I have to get back to work.”

“I’ll tell him,” Odo promised. Rom smiled gratefully and scampered off. Odo turned to look at Quark, who was currently as motionless as the young changeling he had found used to be. Odo felt a pang of sadness when he remembered his former charge. It manifested in Quark’s body as a physical ache in his chest and, by some quirk of Ferengi anatomy, in his hands. Odo’s human body had carried its emotions in its upper and lower abdomen.

Pushing the memories aside, he gingerly dipped Quark’s fingers into the goo, and shivered. The link was even stronger this time; not strong enough to communicate coherently in anything close to a linguistic format, but he felt almost like he was simultaneously existing in his own form as well as Quark’s body—as he would had it been a true link.

Quark’s consciousness immediately wrapped around his own in the manner of a Terran octopus. _Bored,_ it whined, prodding Odo’s essence provocatively.

 _Get off,_ Odo poked back. He gingerly extricated his own thought-appendages, sensing that they were on the verge of fusing with Quark’s, and if that happened, who knows how long they would spend sniping at one another in the link before Odo remembered why he was here.

As it was, Odo feared the only thing preventing them from forming a true link was the solid state of Quark’s brain. Since only one of them was a changeling, he supposed the link must be occurring through electromagnetic interactions between Odo’s morphogenic enzymes and Quark’s nervous system rather than true fusion of their physical forms. It would account for the muscle spasms he had experienced before.

 _Actually_ linking with Quark… Odo was sure he didn’t want to know what that would be like. He spent altogether too much time dealing with the man already; he didn’t need to be in his head, too.

Odo concentrated hard on his last conversation with Quark, trying to “remember” the missing piece: the identity of the merchant who had given Quark the device. An image began to form in his mind’s eye as he tugged on Quark’s memory, but it was incomplete; he saw a kind smile and clasped hands of golden-yellow skin, heard a lilting voice, but the details escaped him.

 _More, Quark,_ he demanded. Now he understood the humanoid was female, or at least female-presenting to Quark’s eyes, and that she had a third eye in the middle of her forehead, and… dark blue hair?

He struggled to recall a name, but could only get scattered vowels. And the more his frustration grew, the harder Quark prodded him, like it was _his_ fault Quark was bad at telepathy. Even without the ability to communicate linguistically, Quark had found a way to argue with Odo. Before he could get distracted by their psychic bickering, Odo hastily renewed his focus. There was still a chance he could prompt Quark to shapeshift into a form that could talk.

He thought back to his first shapes. How it felt to be a cube, and the way it was ever so slightly different from being a pyramid. The recombination of atoms necessary to simulate different textures. In a humanoid, such recollections would be called “muscle memory.”

Through the haze of the link, Odo could see Quark had managed to shift into a very lopsided, drippy cube. The moment Odo lost his concentration, however, Quark promptly reverted to motionless goo.

 _Never mind_ , Odo thought, frustrated. He felt a stab of indignation from Quark. _Rom says hello_ , he muttered into the link, and pulled his hands away.

“No luck?” Bashir asked, looking up from his monitor when Odo returned to the infirmary.

“None,” sighed Odo. “He can barely form basic shapes, let alone anything that could communicate.” Bashir rubbed his face thoughtfully.

“What about Doctor Mora’s techniques—the voltage plates and such? Could they speed things along?”

“Doctor!” Odo looked at him with wide eyes, appalled.

“I only meant the low setting you used the infant changeling, Odo, relax,” Bashir clarified. Odo harrumphed.

“I suppose it’s worth a try,” he said cautiously.

“Alright. I may try it out this afternoon—with your permission, of course. I know it’s still your body.”

“Go ahead,” said Odo warily. He couldn’t deny that the voltage plate had helped the infant learn, without any apparent ill effects. It certainly wouldn’t hurt his physical form; Odo had endured far worse abuse than electric shocks, including a particularly unpleasant event during which he was heated to well over a thousand degrees Celsius. But the instinct to shut down anything to do with Doctor Mora was strong.

(His objection certainly had not had anything to do with feeling protective of Quark in particular, he told himself. It was a matter of principles, of which Odo had many, and applied equally.)

* * *

Odo spent the rest of his day quietly going over the paperwork for the past week’s arrests and feeling distinctly useless, not to mention helpless, both of which were states of being that Odo despised and did his very best to avoid. By 1800 hours, he was hungry again, tired from not having slept well the previous night, and he could swear the air was dryer than it had ever been before—it was making him itch. Odo gave up on working any more hours and decided to eat in his quarters.

Except the replicator in his own quarters wasn’t working, and he’d never bothered to fix it because he didn’t eat. It had almost been a celebration to just let it stay broken after he regained his shapeshifting abilities and no longer had to rely on it. He would have to use Quark’s.

Bashir had assured him that Dax and Rom were hard at work on cracking the device, but that it would probably be a few more days before they were able to get it working. Odo entered Quark’s quarters itching, hungry, tired, and frustrated over his inability to act as security chief in this condition.

Fortunately, Quark’s quarters were blessedly humid, and _quiet._ Quark must have had the entire place soundproofed over the years. Looking around at Quark’s garish collection of material belongings with distaste, Odo stepped over to the replicator and ordered a bowl of Terran rice, which he had discovered to have an agreeable texture and very little flavor.

At least Quark liked his quarters clean and orderly, even if he was a packrat. Had Odo been greeted with a mess the first time he walked through the door, he may have turned around and walked right back to the replimat, and then he wouldn’t be nearly as comfortable right now.

Dubiously, Odo checked the bathroom, preparing to take a sonic shower. Like the rest of the quarters, the little bathroom was nearly spotless. Odo still intended to replicate himself a new toothbrush, however—oral hygiene was important to humanoids, but he didn’t think he could stomach using Quark’s toothbrush. (And he certainly wouldn’t be making use of the tooth sharpener sitting delicately by the sink. He would do Quark’s stretches, but he refused to sharpen his teeth for him.)

It took another hour for Odo to fully accept that he wasn’t going back to his own quarters for the night. They were just too dry and noisy. Showered and dressed in Quark’s pajamas but not yet mentally prepared to climb into his bed, Odo decided to sweep the apartment for contraband. The rest of his duties were to be put on hold, but maybe he could still ruin Quark’s day—a little surprise for when he woke up in his own body again.

He didn’t turn up anything, of course; Quark wasn’t stupid enough to store that sort of thing in his own quarters. Maybe in the back room of the bar, or in his office, but not here. Odo was about to head back to the bedroom and sleep when he spotted something slightly out of place one of Quark’s tidy display shelves. It looked like a worn slip of paper. When Odo moved in to investigate, however, he saw that it was actually a little image capture.

The sole occupant of the capture was a smiling Cardassian woman with a faraway look in her eyes. _Natima Lang._ The background of the capture was dark; it must have been taken when Deep Space Nine was still Terok Nor.

Odo stepped back and looked away, suddenly uncomfortable. Why would Quark have an image capture of Natima Lang in his quarters? They weren’t dating anymore. Natima was too busy being in hiding. Right? 

Odo was physically much more comfortable when he finally laid down to sleep than he was last night, but his mood worsened the more he thought about Quark and Natima. It wasn’t that he was _jealous_ of Quark for having somehow made Natima love him, in spite of how their relationship seemed to go against the natural order of things. That may have bothered him once, but he had Kira now, and he needed no one else.

Quark’s romantic pursuits were few, but they never failed to make Odo uncomfortable. They went against the fragile semblance of order Odo had managed to discern in humanoid behavior. Humanoids often appeared to be a chaotic, disorganized bunch on the surface, but there were certain rules governing how they behaved, and Odo had become familiar with those rules over time. One such rule was that humanoids like Quark didn’t _have_ romantic relationships, especially not with humanoids like Natima.

And yet here Quark was, breaking all of Odo’s rules, as usual.

He rolled onto his side, wincing when the shoulder started to ache again. Memories of Natima’s time on the station scrolled unbidden through his mind. After he’d made the arrest, Quark had come to beg for her release, and Odo had been shocked to realize Quark really did love her. What was more, she seemed to feel the same way about Quark.

It all made Odo anxious, for lack of a better word. Like if Quark could fall in love, all manner of other things Odo had reasoned were impossible could occur. Quark was obnoxious, self-interested, sexually perverse, and a liar. Sexual relationships were one thing, but _love_ required certain _conditions_ that Quark didn’t even try to foster. In all his years on the station, Odo had never observed someone like Quark falling in love with somebody else, or somebody else falling in love with someone like Quark.

Well, admittedly, Odo wasn’t the best observer when it came to intimate emotional matters. But he made up for that deficiency with research, and he knew Quark and Natima certainly wouldn’t happen in a romance novel.

And yet Quark _did_ love, he _was_ capable of it; Odo was not so uncaring (as Quark had accused him of being many times over) to deny such a thing in the face of clear evidence. A romantic relationship with Quark was a potentiality for any humanoid in this universe. Eventually, even if Natima never returned, it was possible that someone else would come along and love Quark—and he would love them back. This _would_ happen, whatever Odo thought of it. For some reason, the notion always made Odo feel like tying himself in a knot.

Sighing in frustration at his current inability to shapeshift into this imagined knot, Odo rolled onto his other side. He stiffened when he remembered where he was. Had Quark and Natima ever…? More uncomfortable than ever, he pushed his face into Quark’s pillow and did his best to sleep.


	3. Bottom

“What are you laughing about, Lieutenant?” Odo demanded, stabbing buttons on his PADD while his second in command snorted into her hand. The rest of his staff had returned to their posts at the end of their morning meeting, but Lieutenant Moru had stayed to access a case file from the terminal in Odo’s office. She now had the file, but instead of heading out to her station, she was standing by the door and giggling.

“I’m sorry sir, it’s just…” Her giggles were rapidly becoming peals of laughter. “The image of Quark sitting behind that huge desk, filing—aha—reports—” she doubled over, cutting herself off. Odo sighed, and it just seemed to make her laugh harder. “I’ll—just—be going,” she gasped, and stumbled out the door. Odo shook his head and turned back to his reports.

After three hours of desk duty, his reports were up to date, his criminal activity logs analyzed, and his surveillance footage examined. He was starting to get antsy. He should be out patrolling the promenade by now, or surveying Quark’s bar… He grimaced at the thought of walking into the bar and being treated as the proprietor. And Quark’s blasted shoulder was aching again.

“Damn Quark and his unsavory merchants!” He grumbled, throwing his PADD down, only to become even more incensed as he heard himself say the words in Quark’s voice. Before his irritation could escalate, his door chimed. “Come in,” he sighed.

It was Major Kira. “Hi, Odo,” she said. Odo felt somewhat mollified when he saw her giving him the gentle smile she reserved for their private conversations. “Just wanted to see how you were holding up.”

“As well as can be expected,” said Odo, gesturing for her to sit down in front of the desk. Kira settled into the chair.

Kira had taken the time to visit Odo in his office for years now, but for the past month she’d been visiting as a romantic partner rather than a friend. _My partner_ , Odo thought, and felt slightly giddy. Odo had always secretly envied the characters in his romance novels for the constant companionship and acceptance they found in their significant other, and now he finally, _finally_ had a love like they did.

Kira was the _perfect_ partner. One more reason why Odo needed to get back in his own form as soon as possible—as much as his liquid body alienated him from so many aspects of romance, it was infinitely preferable to Quark’s.

They both made a tiny lean towards one another across the table, but stopped almost simultaneously. They had gotten into the habit of kissing hello.

“We’d better not,” Odo was the first to say.

“Yeah,” said Kira, relief at being off the hook written plainly in her smile. “Don’t worry. We can make up for it later.” Odo could only nod. He was suddenly struck with the disturbing urge to stroke his own ears, and did all he could to squash it immediately.

“So. Not to pick at a sore spot, but what’s it like being Quark?”

Odo shrugged. “He is a solid. It’s similar to being a human, but with better hearing.”

Kira’s face fell minutely. Most people wouldn’t have caught it, especially not with a Ferengi’s fuzzy vision, but Odo immediately knew he had tread on a mine. Kira probably didn’t want to hear that all solid humanoids were ultimately very similar from Odo’s perspective. What Bajoran would want to be lumped in with a Ferengi? And yet, for all the sensory differences, any pair of humanoids would have more in common with one another than they did with Odo.

“At you least you know what to expect, then.”

“Well, that’s not strictly true. I underestimated how acute Quark’s hearing is, and paid for it in sleep.” Kira laughed at that, looking mollified. But almost immediately, her face fell again.

“Bashir said you can link with Quark; is that true?”

“In a manner of speaking,” said Odo, uncomfortable. After his success with Ariss, he had assumed he would be able to form a similar bond with Kira. But no matter what they tried, Odo failed to initiate any kind of link between them.

When it came to Kira, Odo was anxious about everything he did backfiring on him, but his reasons for not being able to link with her were more complex than that. When Odo touched her, he felt like he was reading the last page of a book first. Like he wasn’t supposed to know what was inside Kira’s mind; it was too precious. Like linking with her would somehow… _overwrite_ this perfect little thing they’d built together on solid terms—what he’d built for her.

With Quark it was different. There wasn’t anything to _lose_ between them, no carefully and painstakingly constructed relationship to worry about, nothing to fracture that they hadn’t both already tried to raze to the ground at some point. Odo didn’t fear Quark’s judgment the way he feared Kira’s; he didn’t worry that something about his changeling nature would turn Quark off, because Quark already openly complained about said nature. Whatever happened between them in the link, Odo could count on their relationship remaining comfortably the same.

So, while linking with Quark was _not_ something Odo had planned to do and had _no_ intention of doing again once this business was resolved… it certainly came easy to him.

That was what Odo thought. But what he said was, “It probably has something to do with the fact that even though I’m in a solid body, I still have memories of how to link. And Quark, of course, is in a changeling body.”

Kira nodded, looking satisfied.

* * *

Odo took a break at 1200 hours when Quark’s body started getting hungry again. He planned to go to the replimat, order the blandest dish he could think of, and bring it back to eat it in his office. He received a signal from Lieutenant Moru as he entered the turbolift. “Go ahead.”

“Chief, Gumiro has broken away from his escort and is loose on the station!”

“What?!” Gumiro’s species was resistant to most phaser fire, and it had been a struggle to subdue him. The plan had been to escort him to this week’s transport leaving for Earth, where he’d committed the majority of his crimes. Apparently that hadn’t worked out. _If I’d been there!_ Odo fumed. “Do you know where he’s gone?”

“We think he’s on habitat ring level 5,” said Moru. “That’s where his turbo lift stopped.”

“I’m on my way,” said Odo. “Habitat ring level 5,” he ordered the lift.

“Chief, you can’t—“

“I know what I’m doing. Head there now and be prepared to act on my signal. Odo out.” Odo stepped out of the turbo lift and began his search for Gumiro.

He didn’t have to look long. Gumiro was large and lumbering, and Quark’s sensitive ears detected him quickly. He was just a few turns away. Odo did his best to ignore Quark’s heart pounding frantically as he continued his pursuit. _Ferengi really are born cowards,_ he fumed.

When he could tell that Gumiro was just around the corner, Odo stepped out in front of him, fixing him with Quark’s deal-making smile. After all these years, Odo knew Quark’s face so well he could probably shapeshift it.

Not that he had ever thought about doing that. “Hello, Gumiro,” he said, staring up at Gumiro’s large face.

“FERENGI,” Gumiro rumbled. Odo suppressed a squeak.

“I can help you get off the station. I’d… hate for our business partnership to be over so soon.”

“I DON’T TRUST YOU,” Gumiro snorted, waving an accusing finger. “YOU’RE PROBABLY THE ONE WHO SOLD ME OUT TO THE CHIEF OF SECURITY!”

“Ah… what makes you say that?” Odo suppressed a grimace of disgust when sweat trickled down the back of Quark’s neck.

“BECAUSE YOU WEREN’T IN A HOLDING CELL WITH ME!” Odo could smell the giant’s foul breath and again had to fight to hide his discomfort. Yet another humanoid experience he hadn’t missed.

“Oh, no! The chief just didn’t arrest me because we have, uh, we have a _special_ relationship!” He couldn’t help squeaking this time. Odo didn’t like implicating himself as the sort to accept bribes, but getting Gumiro subdued again was more important than his pride. “You see, I, um—“

“NO NEED TO EXPLAIN, FERENGI. I FIGURED YOU FOR THE TYPE,” Gumiro made a noise best described as a booming snicker. “DIDN’T FIGURE THE CHIEF FOR IT, THOUGH.”

Well, Odo was glad he didn’t give off the impression of being a bribe-taking sort, at least. “Do you want off Deep Space Nine or not?”

“ALRIGHT. WHAT’S YOUR PLAN?”

* * *

“The device induces quantum entanglement in a subspace pocket!” Rom exclaimed. “Quark and Odo’s bodies have been mapped to one another on the quantum level!”

“It’s not a true body swap!” Jadzia’s eyes sparkled with excitement. She rarely felt as gloriously alive as she did in the moments when she was about to crack a scientific puzzle. It was a little like Curzon’s thrill just before he made a very dubious life choice. “Their perceptions have just gotten switched around somehow because of the entanglement… But why a switch? Why not experience everything simultaneously?”

“Maybe that’s what this device is really for, but it’s not designed for use on Ferengi or Changelings,” Rom hummed. “Quark couldn’t handle being in two bodies at once. His brain isn’t very flexible. Maybe Odo can… but only when he’s in physical contact with Quark! The entanglement is helping him link!” Rom scratched his head. “So-o-o… How are we gonna get them untangled?”

Dax sighed, pursing her lips. “That’s the next piece of the puzzle, I’m afraid.”

* * *

“Just take the turbo lift one level up, then open the panel to the conduit on your left. Then it’s just straight ahead until you get to where the runabout docked,” Odo lied, opening the emergency control panel to the lift while Gimuro stepped dubiously inside. There were absolutely no suitable places for a runabout to dock on that level, and the access code he had given was fake, but Gumiro wasn’t likely to know.

“I WON’T FIT IN A CONDUIT,” Gimuro grunted.

“They’re big enough, don’t worry. Just wait while I get the surveillance turned off,” Odo lied again.

“THIS BETTER WORK, QUARK, OR YOU’LL PAY IN MORE WAYS THAN LATINUM,” Gimuro growled. “I DON’T CARE IF YOU’RE BLOWING THE—“

“Computer, security override Odo gamma seven,” Odo barked at the panel. The turbo lift doors slammed shut, and he breathed a sigh of relief. “Odo to security; I have Gimuro trapped in turbo lift four, requesting backup—“

There was a roar from within the turbo lift, a deafening clang, and a large dent appeared in the turbo lift’s door. “QUAAARK!” Odo stood frozen in horror as Gimuro pried the doors apart and shot out with dizzying speed, extending a massive hand which wrapped crushingly around Quark’s entire throat. He tried to scream, but Gimuro’s thumb was on Quark’s vocal chords. He could hear Lieutenant Moru asking if he was alright through the comm, but was powerless to reply. He just had to hope backup would arrive before he ran out of air.        

“ _You little cheat,_ ” Gimuro whispered in one of Quark’s ears. It was the first quiet thing Odo had heard him say, and it sent a spike of panic through Quark’s body. “ _If I’m going to jail, I’m gonna kill you first—_ “ There was the whistle of a tranquilizer dart next to Odo’s face, and Gumiro was cut off just as Odo started to see stars bursting out of the corners of his eyes. The pressure on his throat released, and he stumbled, landing ungracefully on his back.

Gumiro shouted incoherently and stumbled, yanking the dart out of his neck. Two officers went to attempt to restrain him, but even woozy from the tranquilizer, Gumiro smacked them both aside and took off down the corridor.

“Set phasers to kill!” Odo shouted desperately from the floor. It was the only setting that would actually hurt Gumiro, and Odo refused to let the man get away—even if it meant Gumiro might die from his injuries.

It was too late, however; Gumiro was gone, and the other officers were down.

“Chief! Are you alright?” Moru demanded, her face swimming into view above him.

“Fine,” he croaked, fear quickly giving way to shame and humiliation as he processed what had just happened. He had been beaten by a common criminal.

“Well, I’m taking you to the infirmary anyway,” said Moru sternly. “That was a reckless stunt you pulled. And I don’t think Quark would have appreciated you risking his neck… literally.”

* * *

“I don’t think Quark would appreciate you risking his neck,” said Bashir, running a dermal regenerator over the bruises on Quark’s throat. Bashir chuckled to himself. “Literally. Heh.”

“I couldn’t just let Gumiro escape! He’s a dangerous criminal!” Odo protested, too angry about Gumiro to get angry about Bashir’s wordplay.

“Come now, Odo, someone else could have handled it. Worf apprehended him not half an hour after you tried to go after him yourself,” Bashir shot back, looking a bit exasperated. “There was no need for heroics.”

“Doctor, Quark _made_ this mess,” Odo argued. “If I’d been escorting Gumiro, he would never have escaped. It’s only fair that Quark should fix what he broke!”

“You could both have died,” Bashir was rolling his eyes rather unprofessionally, Odo thought.

“This is an unacceptable state of affairs and it cannot continue,” Odo growled, crossing Quark’s arms over his chest.

“Dax and Rom are doing everything they can. All _you_ have to do is wait, and try not to get into trouble.”        

* * *

Odo didn’t wait, of course.

One of Odo’s longstanding flaws was that he sometimes let his temper get the better of him. Most of the time, Odo was able to keep his life and his emotions firmly under his own control. When one slipped out of his grasp, however, the other tended to follow.

Everything that had happened over the past two days had gone wrong. Odo’s orderly existence had been disrupted in the worst way possible. He’d thought being a human was bad—this was worse. One way or another, Odo _had_ to get Quark to tell him where that device came from so he could put things right.

Comforted by the strength of his conviction, Odo marched into the lab and used his security codes to open up Bashir’s logs. According to Bashir, the voltage plate treatment hadn’t worked at all. Quark showed no signs of shapeshifting activity whatsoever. The result was aberrant, and should have been Odo’s first warning that he was missing something vital. But he ignored it.

Instead, he confronted Quark, who was in the bucket again next to the voltage plate, plunging into the link with accusation. As he should have expected, Quark responded to his entry with a deceptively pliant mannerism, a sort of psychic _who, me?_

 _Why do you refuse to shapeshift?_   Odo demanded, anger pulsing through his thought-appendages.

Quarks’ shrank back, oozing an inky wariness. _?????_ was all Odo got in response. It should have a served as a clue that Quark couldn’t actually understand what Odo was trying to convey; the link simply wasn’t complex enough for that. It was, in fact, limited to emotions and memories; words and intentions got scrambled along the way. Quark could feel that Odo was angry, but he could not comprehend why.

Odo was too focused on his goal to consider whether Quark had understood him or not; all he knew was that Quark had information he wanted, and somehow he had to get it. He directed Quark to get out of the bucket and onto the plate; when Odo called on a muscle memory, Quark responded as he had before. Once Quark was settled on the dish, Odo pulled out of the link and turned on the voltage plate. He was prompted to set the desired voltage.

Odo hesitated. He remembered being much smaller than he was now, sitting in a similar dish, and suddenly experiencing more pain than he’d ever felt in his short life—without any indication that it was only temporary, and that he was in no real danger.

 _This is in Quark’s own best interest,_ Odo reminded himself. He started at 6 millivolts—no more than a slight tickle.

As Bashir had described in his report, nothing happened. Odo turned up the voltage to 10 millivolts. Still no change. 12 millivolts—a somewhat unpleasant tingle—and Quark didn’t even twitch. Odo frowned. Maybe Quark still wasn’t able to interpret sensory information from Odo’s body, and wasn’t actually registering any discomfort. He raised the setting to 15 millivolts.

At 15 millivolts, Quark started to move towards the center, where there was no charge, but his movements were uneven and erratic. He would pull part of Odo’s body into the center, but that part would ooze out again when he tried to coordinate a different part. Heartened by his success, and riding a surge of satisfaction at having conquered those pesky feelings known as sympathy and protectiveness, Odo didn’t think anything of increasing the voltage to 20 millivolts—the setting Doctor Mora had used on Odo the first time he was on the plate.

Quark had made it to the center, but seemed unable to alter his composition in such a way that would allow him to stay there. The result was that he kept slipping and sliding out of the center and into the charged region of the plate. Odo watched, his excitement at the progress they were making giving way to worry against his best efforts. Something wasn’t right. The infant changeling had managed it on the first try, and at only 6 millivolts. And Quark was clearly feeling _something_ , so his poor performance wasn’t due to lack of motivation.

With Quark’s sensitive hearing, Odo detected a high frequency sound that was steadily increasing in decibel level. To his horror, he realized it was coming from the plate. Odo knew exactly what it was; it was a sound he only made in his natural state when he was in pain, generated by an instinctual, rapid vibration of his molecules. At this level of discomfort the sound had still been too faint and high pitched for Dr. Mora’s ears, but not for Quark’s. Odo hastily turned off the plate and watched Quark collapse out of the center and spread out of the plate again. The noise faded almost immediately.

“20 millivolts!” Odo muttered to himself. “What was I _thinking?_ ” Apparently, nothing rational. He leaned against the controls as his frustration faded away and was replaced with remorse. Odo could be strict, and uncompromising, and he struggled with matters of sensitivity and cases that required a more delicate touch. But zapping people to get your own way was a downright Cardassian way of handling things, and Odo was supposed to be better than that. Quark’s face felt hot with Odo’s shame.

He hadn’t meant to go much further than perhaps 10 millivolts, which would just be a bit uncomfortable, not painful—like a foot falling asleep. Somewhere along the way he’d just started _assuming_ that Quark wasn’t able to access all of Odo’s senses, and needed a higher setting, or that he was just being deliberately contrarian.

 _I should never have assumed something like that,_ Odo thought. _That’s where Doctor Mora got into trouble with me. He assumed I couldn’t feel that kind of pain._

Odo touched Quark again, intending to express some sort of apology for his poor conduct, as injurious as it might be to his own pride. He stood there for almost five full seconds with a hand in the goo before he realized he couldn’t initiate a link.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anticipated FAQ:
> 
> Q: Is quantum entanglement real?
> 
> A: YES!! http://www.space.com/31933-quantum-entanglement-action-at-a-distance.html  
> A slightly less romantic take: http://www.livescience.com/28550-how-quantum-entanglement-works-infographic.html
> 
> Q: So can you actually do telepathy with quantum entanglement?
> 
> A: I highly doubt it lol


	4. Strange

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: a skeevy assault-y incident occurs in this chapter, but it's over very quickly.

“What were you _thinking?_ ” Dax stared at him. “You always said you abhorred Doctor Mora’s methods!”

Odo was sitting on the biobed again, clasping and unclasping Quark’s fingers. His feet still didn’t touch the floor, but he didn’t care about that anymore. “I assumed that because Quark wasn’t responding to the charge, he couldn’t feel what was happening, or didn’t register it as pain.” He swallowed. “I was wrong.”

“Not to say I told you so, but I did say all you needed to do was wait,” said Bashir, reentering the infirmary after running scans on Quark. “All his readings are normal. It would appear that he’s just giving you the silent treatment.”

Dax pinched the bridge of her nose. “So, why can’t Quark shapeshift again?”

“Well, at this point my theory’s almost as much of an assumption as Odo’s,” Bashir gave Odo a pointed glance, “but, basically, shapeshifting requires that one compute incredibly complex problems instantaneously. Take the human visual system as an analogy—analyzing visual input is no simple task. It’s why humans who’ve been blind all their lives can’t simply put on a visor and be done with it. They need extensive therapy. Now, Quark’s case is obviously a bit different, since Odo’s knowledge of shapeshifting has got to be in there somewhere—but you know Quark. He’s probably still trying to think and move like a Ferengi, not a shapeshifter. He clearly can’t access whatever mechanism is needed to perform the calculations needed to shapeshift.”

“But he was able to shapeshift when Odo was linking with him,” Dax pointed out.

“Yes, most likely because Odo was accessing the mechanism for him,” Bashir finished.

“So if Odo had been patient and tried linking with him a few more times instead of zapping him the first chance he got, he might have actually gotten somewhere!” Dax gave Odo a withering look, and Odo bristled.

“I did not ‘zap him the first chance I got!’ And it’s not my fault he’d rather hold a grudge than let me—“ he forced himself to say the word— “apologize!”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but for once, Quark’s not the one at fault,” Bashir reminded Odo.

“Well, Odo, you’re going to have to find some way to get him to link with you again, because Rom and I have hit a wall working on the device,” said Dax, crossing her arms. “We understand it works through quantum entanglement, but to put it simply, we can’t find the on switch. There’s no way to activate it.”

“Isn’t there anyone else who can link with him and express that I didn’t mean to hurt him?” Odo asked, desperate.

“Rom and I already tried that,” said Dax, shaking her head. “Rom had slightly better luck than I did, but we both only got vague flashes from him, not enough to communicate. That’s another thing we discovered about the device—we think it wasn’t supposed to create a body swap situation. It was just supposed to allow two people to feel the same sensations as one another simultaneously. For whatever reason, it couldn’t do that for you two, but it has been helping you link.”

“But there has to be some way to activate the device,” Odo protested weakly.

"We’ll keep trying, of course. But in the meantime, I suggest channeling your impatience into finding a way to get Quark to forgive you.” Dax sighed, uncrossing her arms and rubbing at her eyes. “I’ll tell Sisko he’d better assign Worf to security until we get this sorted out.”

Bashir chuckled as Dax left the room. “I don’t envy you, Odo. You’ve got your work cut out for you.”

* * *

Odo paced back and forth across the lab. He’d tried to link with Quark three more times since his ill thought out experiment with the voltage plate, with no success.

“Quark,” he finally said out loud, “I’m _sorry_.”

There was no response, of course. Even if Quark could hear him, he had no way to reply, and apparently no interest in doing so either. Sighing, Odo looked at the voltage plate. He felt a surge of anger at that stupid instrument and all the trouble it had caused him over the years. He’d been so determined not to subject the infant changeling to it. But once it had proven itself a useful tool, he’d wasted no time taking its function to its logical extreme.

When Odo’s eyes landed on the bucket, however, he thought he might have a solution.

* * *

“Here we are, Quark,” said Odo to the bucket of Quark-goo. They were in Quark’s bar, at a table on the second floor, away from prying eyes but not far enough that Quark would not have been able to piece together where he was. The place was as noisy and chaotic as ever. Odo wondered how Quark put up with it with his sensitive hearing.

“See? We haven’t let anything happen to your bar. Your staff has been handling everything just fine.” He sighed. “And Worf is in charge of security now, not me, so you can rest assured they’ll carry on with whatever illegal scheme you’ve got going without my interference.”

A Ferengi waiter appeared from behind a crowd of Bolians and made his way to their table. “Your holosuite is ready,” he said to Odo. Between Odo controlling Quark’s body, and then asking for a holosuite of all things, the poor man didn’t seem to know what to make of the situation and left as quickly as possible.

Odo hefted Quark’s bucket into his arms and entered the holosuite. If it was up to Quark, he probably would have picked some revolting sex program, but Odo wasn’t willing to go _that_ far to make it up to Quark. (It probably wouldn’t have done much for him in his current state, anyway.)

The program was an emulation of a garden on Risa, shortly after sundown. Odo had chosen it because humanoids always seemed to want to go there, and it was a comfortable temperature for shapeshifting. Odo had actually used it before to practice plant forms—there was everything from tiny mushrooms and Risian jack-in-the-pulpits to enormous, neon purple willows.

He set the bucket down gently on the ground and took a seat next to it, leaning back against a large, worn stone. He planned on giving Quark a few minutes to figure out where he was, then pour him out on the ground and let him interact with the different textures there. Odo had often found this sort of activity pleasurable while regenerating in his natural state.

Apparently, the environment was soothing to humanoids as well as changelings, because Odo felt Quark’s body getting more relaxed as he sat quietly and watched jewel-like insects flutter around the flower blossoms.

“I can see why humanoids speak so highly of Risa,” he said softly, just in case Quark could hear him, even if he couldn’t understand. He sighed and leaned into the rock, closing his eyes.

“I’m afraid naptime is over, Quark,” said a voice. Odo jumped to Quark’s feet, stumbling back against the rock. Standing in front of him was a balding humanoid male, dressed in black and carrying a phaser.

 _Hagath?_ Odo had figured someone would have taken the opportunity to assassinate the man now that he’d been knocked off his pedestal, but apparently that had been yet another one of the careless errors he was making lately. “How did you get in here?” Odo demanded.

“Hagath is not physically here. This is a computer virus Gumiro kindly planted it in your holosuites for me. He was happy to do it—you shouldn’t have ripped him off for those crystals.” Holo-Hagath was smiling everywhere but his eyes.

“Computer, end program!” Nothing happened. Hagath laughed and stepped in closer, pushing the phaser against Quark’s chest.

“I’m hurt, Quark. Don’t you want to catch up? Tell me about the business ventures you’ve been working on since you ruined mine?”

“Listen to me,” said Odo, raising Quark’s hands. “There’s been a misunderstanding. I’m not Quark— _eee!_ ”

“Hmm,” said Hagath, gripping Quark’s ear. Odo held back another scream with gritted teeth, seeing stars from the intensity of the pain. “You certainly scream like Quark. I did warn you not to ever cross me,” he whispered. Odo felt Hagath’s breath against Quark’s cheek, which was somehow even more unpleasant than getting his ear pinched.

Odo doubted Quark had the physical strength to back up the maneuver he was about to attempt, but he’d be damned if he was going to stand here and get manhandled by a hologram. Hagath had lowered his phaser once he had hold of Quark’s ear, and Odo seriously doubted he was planning to shoot Quark yet anyway; he had always pegged Hagath for the kind of man who liked to make people squirm before he put them down.

With that judgment in mind, Odo used Quark’s height to his advantage by kneeing Hagath in the groin, followed by hard strike to his elbow to break his grip on Quark’s ear. Hagath let go, stumbling a bit in shock. Odo moved as fast as Quark’s reflexes could manage, snatching the phaser out of Hagath’s hand and pointing at him, taking steps backward as he did so. Hagath watched him with interest.

“When did you learn to defend yourself?” He asked. “You always seemed to rely on that shapeshifting constable to protect you.”

Odo snorted. “He has more to do with this than you’d ever guess.”

“Really,” said Hagath. He snapped his fingers, and the phaser Odo was holding disappeared. “You know you can’t actually hurt me, Quark. This body is just a hologram.”

“No, but I can slow you down. You may be a virus, but I doubt you can actually break the physical laws of this holoprogram. Gumiro’s not a good enough hacker for that.” There was an emergency safety switch installed in all the holosuites, prompted by one too many disgruntled guests running into a bug and getting stuck. Odo, who made a habit of keeping up with safety regulations on the station, knew that the off switch for this particular program was on the other side of that boulder he’d been enjoying.

Hagath scowled. “I would have hired a better one if you hadn’t utterly ruined me! But it won’t matter. A piss poor hacking job is still good enough for what I have in mind.” Odo tried to make a run for the switch, but Hagath was on him in an instant. He felt the breath leave Quark’s lungs as he was pinned roughly to the ground. Hagath seemed amused by his continued attempts to struggle out of the hold.

“Don’t look so upset, Quark,” he purred, tracing a finger around the outside of Quark’s lobe. Odo shuddered in revulsion, feeling incredibly violated in a way that he had rarely experienced as a changeling. The only comparable experience was when the changeling stowed away on the defiant had attacked him through a link before Odo was forced to kill them. “I do so enjoy reuniting with old friends, and the holosuite we used to use is so appropriate—ghh!”

Holo-Hagath was suddenly pulled off him. Odo sat up and saw him wrestling with a familiar tentacle wrapped around his neck. The source of the tentacle was Quark’s bucket. Odo spared a half-second to marvel at this turn of events before stumbling to the rock and slamming a hand down on the emergency switch.

The garden disappeared, taking Hagath with it. Odo sagged with relief, sinking to the floor of the blank holosuite while Quark withdrew into the bucket.

“I wouldn’t have let him hurt you, you know,” Odo said crossly as he crawled over to the bucket, trying to salvage his pride. Never mind that Hagath had basically had Odo at his mercy. “I hope you’re ready to talk to me again. The longer I’m gone, the more security breaches seem to occur.” Hesitantly, he reached into the bucket.

Odo barely registered the link when it formed; it came so naturally this time around. This time, when Quark extended his thought-appendages to Odo, Odo didn’t try to keep careful distance. He let the fusion happen, and time curled in on itself.

* * *

Odo had feared getting lost in the flow of memories and sensations and forgetting that he’d come for a specific recollection. That fear wasn’t unfounded. The only limitation on their communion was the speed of light as electrical impulses traveled up and down Quark’s spinal cord.

Quark and Odo shared many memories, and like sought out like. It was a bit like living each second he’d ever spent with Quark simultaneously. Quark shouted that Odo was a fascist, and in the same moment embraced him and thanked him for letting Natima go. He told Odo he’d count on his return from the Founders as he lay dying of his injuries in Odo’s arms. He said that Odo had all the emotions of a stone as they sat in the rubble Odo had made of his quarters.

Odo told Quark he hated him, smiled at him and thanked him for finding the infant changeling, smacked him across the face in a panicked attempt to wake him up, felt his human face blush when he teasingly read Odo’s novels aloud, and did a million other tiny things all at once. They embraced, shoved one another away, shared a laugh at someone else’s expense.

Within each memory, there were flashes of what it was like to be Quark. The strain of pulling Odo’s body up the mountain. The curious softness of Odo’s body against his. The blinding pain of a shattered eye socket. The warmth of the biobed where he lay next to Odo. The biting discomfort of electric shocks. That memory was sour, but it was part of their shape now. Only a small part… _but I’m sorry anyway_ , Odo thought, smoothing down the jagged edges with his own roughness.

Every square meter of Deep Space Nine was simultaneously filled with their bickering as every one of Quark’s neurons found a place in Odo’s enzymatic thought matrix. Each memory layered on top of another, three dimensional slices of a higher dimensional structure. Together, they formed a shape even Odo couldn’t make.

The memory Odo was looking for had to be in here somewhere, but their shape had become so vast and complicated, he suddenly felt very, very small inside of it. Odo gathered his courage and reached out with a single thought-appendage, holding up a single phrase that had somehow tessellated across their whole shape:

_Count on it_

Quark met Odo’s phrase with his own—a weak nuclear force spun it gently into Odo's grasp; he unwrapped it to see—

“Ven Eross,” he said aloud.

No, Odo didn’t say that; Quark did. Odo wasn’t sure what it meant, but he knew it was true.

Odo examined himself. His—their—form was unfinished, flowing over itself, but vaguely humanoid. Its eyes were not developed enough to see, but Odo could get a look at it using Quark’s eyes. He found himself unsure if the name of the merchant had come from Quark’s mouth or from the shimmering figure emerging from the bucket.

The merchant! “Ven Eross!” He gasped, and fell out of the link.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anticipated FAQ:
> 
> Q: What's the weak nuclear force?
> 
> A: http://www.livescience.com/49254-weak-force.html


	5. Charm

“Deep Space Nine to _Kithara 7_ , please respond,” said Jadzia Dax, hailing Ven Eross’s vessel.

The Yentari Communion and the Federation hadn’t had cause to deal with each other very often. The Communion was very small in scope; the Yentari had only achieved warp capability about 25 years ago, and were rarely found outside of this particular neighborhood of the Alpha Quadrant. Since Deep Space Nine had opened itself up to a wider variety of traders, a few Yentari had started to pass through. From what Dax had heard, they tended to have very polite and agreeable dispositions, and there was talk of approaching the Communion with an offer to become part of the Federation. She hoped that Ven Eross would prove as pleasant as her brethren.

She was certainly very good looking, Dax noted with an appreciative smile when the woman herself appeared on the screen. Her three eyes were a pretty shade of pink that offset her golden skin and blue hair. When she smiled back, Dax found it quite dazzling. Dax prided herself on not limiting her options when it came to appearances, but she could still appreciate beauty when she saw it.

“Greetings, Deep Space Nine,” said Ven Eross. Oh, and what a nice voice! This was entirely unfair.

“Hello, is this Ven Eross?” said Dax, reminding herself that she was calling on business.

“That is me.” 

“Pleased to meet you, Ven Eross. I’m Lieutenant Jadzia Dax. Have you had any dealings with a Ferengi named Quark recently?”

“Oh, yes!” Ven Eross smiled wider, showing dazzlingly green teeth. “I sold him a shipment of Andorian tuber root three of your days ago.”

“Well… he says you also gave him a gift,” said Dax, not really sure how best to break it to Ven Eross that her act of kindness had gone terribly wrong.

“Yes, I gave him a _la-niel_.” Dax’s universal translator stumbled over the last word, loosely providing “thought-exchanger” as a possible meaning.

“What does a… _la-niel_ do exactly?”

Ven Eross actually looked a bit sheepish. “Ah. It is supposed to give two people a taste of how the other experiences the world… Well, I should have known it would not work on an alien. It is just that in my culture it would have been terribly rude for me not to give one to Quark when he was clearly in a _la-tar_! I could not help myself.”

“Hold on. What’s a _la-tar_?”

“Sorry,” said Ven Eross, drooping. “I am still getting used to dealing with alien cultures. A _la-tar_ is the stage when two parties have not yet communicated their interest to one another. At least one party must be given a _la-niel_ by a third party in order to proceed with the courtship.”

“Wh— _Courtship?_ ”

“Yes. On Yentaria, we have no concept of your Federation’s… _pry-vah-see_. We share every part of our lives with one another. Refusing to give my blessing to a friend’s _la-tar_ against my own judgment that the match was well made—it would be a serious offense on Yentaria!”

“You consider Quark a friend?” Dax asked, bewildered.

Ven Eross tilted her pretty head. “I have met him more than three times. That means he is my friend.”

Dax stared. And people said Humans were outgoing. “Okay… Now I have to know. Who is he in a _la-tar_ with?”

Ven Eross almost bounced in her seat. “You do understand Yentari culture, Lieutenant Jadzia Dax! Of course I will tell you. It is your chief security officer!”

“ _Odo?_ ” Dax’s mouth dropped open. She’d assumed that Odo getting on the receiving end of the _la-niel_ had just been a fluke accident.

Ven Eross clapped her hands together with glee. “Yes! I knew it the first time I observed them speaking at the bar. But that was only my first visit, and I was not obligated to do anything about it, since Quark was still not my friend. But when I saw them again on my most recent visit, I knew I could not just leave and not give Quark a _la-niel_!”

“You’re sure about what you saw?” Dax pressed, leaning towards the screen. Come to think of it, Quark’s behavior towards Odo had always seemed a bit… flirtatious. And, honestly, they spent quite a lot of voluntary time together for a pair who acted like rivals. 

“Yentari are highly sensitive when it comes to these matters,” said Ven Eross seriously. “We have an instinct.”

“Wow, Ven Eross… this is life-changing information,” Dax breathed, leaning back heavily in her seat. Ven Eross beamed. “But, uh, the _la-niel_ did work, it just had some unintended side effects.”

“Oh no! What happened?”

“The best way I can describe it is that they’ve swapped bodies. And their bodies are very different, so… It hasn’t been the most pleasant experience for either of them.”

“I am sorry,” Ven Eross said mournfully, looking genuinely distraught. “But do not worry! The effects are only temporary! It takes fifty of your hours for the device to deactivate itself.”

 _That’s… only half an hour from now. All we had to do was wait_ , Dax thought dryly. “Alright, well. Is there any chance it won’t deactivate?”

“If it does not, you can just destroy it. The way the device works is, it generates a subspace field to entangle to both parties. If you just smash it, it will stop working for sure.”

 _If only Rom or I had just smashed it in frustration_ , Dax thought, shaking her head. “Thanks so much for your help, Ven Eross. But in the future, please don’t feel obligated to give anyone on this station a _la-niel_.”

“Of course,” said Ven Eross, looking sorry. Dax immediately felt bad.

“But, um, who knows. You might find some non-Yentarians interested in trying them. Just… tell them what’s going to happen first.”

“I will! Please tell Quark I wish him luck with his _la-tar_!”

“By the way,” Dax couldn’t help herself from adding, “he’s probably not paying a very competitive price for those tuber roots.”

“Oh, I know. But it is okay. I became a merchant to make friends, not profits!”

Dax ended the call feeling determined to make sure the Dominion never laid a finger on Yentaria.

* * *

Dax, Rom, Bashir, Odo, and Quark’s bucket convened in the infirmary again fifteen minutes later.

“So-o-o… All we would have had to do was smash it?” Asked Rom.

“Yup,” said Dax. “Hardly seems worth it now, though. It’s only a few more minutes until the effects wear off anyway.”

“I know engineering solutions can be counter-intuitive sometimes, but this sure takes the cake!” Rom had been picking up a number of human idioms from O’Brien lately.

“Shouldn’t you be in the holosuites getting rid of Hagath’s virus?” Odo asked.

“I’m still on break,” Rom pouted.

“So am I,” said Dax. “Come on, Rom; we deserve a drink after all this.” The two of them filed out. Bashir just smiled smugly.

“Once again, if you’d followed my advice…”

Odo threw up Quark’s hands. “I know, doctor. I know.”

“Less than five minutes until the device deactivates,” beeped the computer. Odo hopped onto Bashir’s biobed, hopefully for the last time, and waited. He was getting quite hungry, not having eaten since this morning, but he’d leave it to Quark to deal with that.

He found himself wondering if he would still be able to link with Quark without the assistance of the device. The _la-niel_ , Dax had called it. He still fully intended to ban them, even if the Yentari merchant had meant well. And he certainly wouldn’t be attempting to link with Quark ever again, but… well, he was just curious. It wasn’t often that Odo got a chance to link with anyone.

Getting the memory out of Quark had been easy once Odo stopped beating around the bush about it. Every other time they linked during this whole mess, Odo had acted like they were on opposite sides, but it turned out they’d just been standing on different parts of a Mobius strip. It hadn’t been like linking with Arissa, which was mostly an exchange of pure sensation, and it wasn’t like his attempts to link with Nerys, which had never yielded anything at all. It may have been comparable to linking with another changeling, but no changeling Odo had ever linked with had shared such a long history with Odo.

The experience was almost nonlinear. It was nice.

…Really nice.

Before he could dwell too long on what exactly that implied, Odo blinked, and found himself in a bucket, feeling a bit like he’d slept for days. Which he supposed he had, in a way; being in his natural form was a bit like sleeping. He relished the sensation of his morphogenic enzymes at work as he left the bucket and took on his usual humanoid form.

Quark was sitting up on the biobed, looking bleary-eyed and confused. He jumped a bit when he realized where he was, then spotted Odo and Bashir.

“What happened? I just had the strangest dream—“

“Not a dream, I’m afraid,” said Bashir, looking far too amused. Quark squinted at Odo in confusion. Odo crossed his arms—his own, shapeshifting arms. What a relief.

“You need to stretch your shoulder,” he said, smirking at the way Quark’s mouth fell open. “And I’m increasing security around your bar from now on. There are too many people in this quadrant who want to kill you.”

“Oh, and Dax told me to tell you good luck with your _la-tar_ ,” said Bashir. “Whatever that means.” Quark must have understood, because he turned bright magenta, which was, incidentally, the color of Andorian tuber root.

“That—that meddling Yentari!” Quark spluttered, leaping off the bed. “I told her to stay out of my business!” He almost tripped over himself as he sprinted out of the infirmary, presumably to call Ven Eross and ream her out.

“Apology accepted, I assume?” Bashir said to Odo. Odo didn’t even dignify that comment with a harrumph.

* * *

“I cannot give Constable Odo and Major Kira a _la-niel_ , Dax! I am sorry!” Ven shook her head vigorously. “Giving a false blessing is a bad as refusing to give a true one!”

“That’s too bad,” said Dax, taking a sip of her drink. They were in Quark’s, on the third floor, where they could people watch without being noticed. If she hadn’t been dating Worf, Dax would have wasted no time in asking Ven to try some Trill courtship, but she respected Worf’s desire to keep their relationship closed. “I think it would really spice up their sex life.”

Ven wrinkled her nose. “I do not understand why you give them your blessing. There is no _la_ between them. No… romantic chemistry, as you say. They are _ca-tari_ , dear friends, not _la-tari_ , lovers!” She slammed her own drink vehemently on the table. “Odo has made a simple error in judgment; a beginner’s mistake. On Yentaria a consensus of his friends would have corrected him years ago!”

Dax chuckled. “Well, around here, part of the fun is figuring these things out for yourself.”

Quark and Odo were currently bickering about something on the first level. Quark was gesticulating wildly, while Odo crossed his arms and looked on with fondness barely concealed behind a stern glare. Dax watched them, unable to suppress her own smile. Ven really had been onto something. She just hoped Quark and Odo could figure it out for themselves sometime before the heat death of the universe.

“What a strange custom,” said Ven. “ _Pry-vah-see._ ”

“I know. Sometimes I think it’s a bit overrated myself,” said Dax wistfully. Then she gave Ven a conspiratorial smile. “Now, you mentioned having seen Julian and Garak talking in the replimat…”


End file.
